Brown and Sarkozy join forces after EU spat
Brown and Sarkozy join forces after EU spat
Friday 11th December 2009
Gordon Brown and French president Nicholas Sarkozy have joined forces in an urgent call for a super-tax on bankers' bonuses around the world.The two leaders showed solidarity by jointly signing an article for today’s Wall Street Journal saying countries need to impose tougher limits on bonuses in the financial sector.
The letter comes after a diplomatic spat among the leaders over who had received the best posts in the EU commission.
Mr Sarkozy claimed he had clinched victory over the UK after the key post of EU commissioner for the internal market, including financial services, went to former French foreign minister Michel Barnier.
Mr Brown denied that supervision of the City would now be in French hands and pointed out that Mr Barnier's top civil servant within the commission would be British.
However, Mr Sarkozy did little to ease the situation when he claimed the British were the "big losers" in the job share-out in French newspaper Le Monde.
The claim was that Britain missed out on the financial services job because Mr Brown was so intent on getting Baroness Ashton appointed as the EU's new foreign policy chief.
In an apparent snub, Downing Street, cancelled a meeting with the president during his visit to London last week.
The leaders will meet tonight at an EU summit to primarily discuss climate change and the state of Europe’s economic discovery.
It will be the first meeting between the two since the Lisbon Treaty came into force and the first to be attended by the holders of the two tops jobs created by the treaty – Baroness Ashton and Belgian prime minister Herman van Rompuy, who is the first-ever president of the European Council.
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